Download or read book Angels of Mercy written by William Seraile and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013-05-27 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the nation’s first orphanage for African American children, founded in New York City nearly two centuries ago. This book uncovers the history of the Colored Orphan Asylum, founded in 1836. Through three wars, two major financial panics, a devastating fire during the 1863 Draft Riots, several epidemics, waves of racial prejudice, and severely strained budgets, it cared for orphaned, neglected, and delinquent children, eventually receiving financial support from such renowned New York families as the Jays, Murrays, Roosevelts, Macys, and Astors. While the white female managers and their male advisers were dedicated to uplifting these children, the evangelical, mainly Quaker founding managers also exhibited the extreme paternalistic views endemic at the time, accepting advice or support from the African American community only grudgingly. It was frank criticism in 1913 from W.E.B. Du Bois that highlighted the conflict between the orphanage and the community it served, and it wasn’t until 1939 that it hired the first black trustee. More than 15,000 children were raised in the orphanage, and throughout its history letters and visits have revealed that hundreds if not thousands of “old boys and girls” looked back with admiration and respect at the home that nurtured them throughout their formative years. Weaving together African American history with a unique history of New York City, this is not only a painstaking study of a previously unsung institution but a unique window onto complex racial dynamics during a period when many failed to recognize equality among all citizens as a worthy purpose. In its current incarnation as Harlem-Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services, it continues to aid children (albeit not as an orphanage)—and maintains the principles of the women who organized it so long ago. “Scholars and general readers interested in New York history, race relations, social services, [or] philanthropy . . . will benefit from this work.”?Social Sciences Reviews

Download or read book A History of the New York Juvenile Asylum and Its Orphan Trains written by Clark Kidder and published by Kidder Productions, LLC. This book was released on 2021-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the mid-1800s, the streets of New York City were home to an estimated 30,000 homeless, truant or orphaned children. These poor unfortunates were destined to commit petty crimes, be truant from school or home, or enter into prostitution, creating a tremendous drain on city resources and society in general. Magistrates committed the youthful offenders to asylums by the hundreds, one of which was the New York Juvenile Asylum, established in 1851. Overcrowding became a problem almost immediately. For the New York Juvenile Asylum, relief came with the implementation of a western indenturing plan in which companies of children were sent west, at first in partnership with the New York Children's Aid Society, later with Reverend Mr. Enoch Kingsbury of Danville, Illinois, and finally, independently by the Asylum itself. At the time, the American West was in critical need of laborers in both agriculture and industry, and many families were eager to take in a child who was willing to work in exchange for food and lodging, or to learn a trade. Indenture papers were signed stipulating boys would stay until age twenty-one and girls until age eighteen. At the completion of their indenture each child received a cash payment, new clothing, and a bible. The Asylum chose the state of Illinois to indenture the vast majority of its children in, later establishing a permanent western agent and agency house in the state. In 1861, the Illinois State Legislature passed a bill recognizing the indentures of the Asylum as legally binding documents. The orphan trains of the New York Juvenile Asylum were sent west from 1854 until circa 1921. By the time the practice ended the Asylum had indentured over 6,600 children in Illinois and a few surrounding states - chiefly Iowa. Volume one of this set chronicles the history of the New York Juvenile Asylum (later named The Children's Village) from its earliest history until circa 1923. Volumes Two through Volume Six are comprised of lists of all known names of children sent west from the Asylum, including dates, where sent, and with whom they were indentured.

Download or read book The Children s Aid Society of New York written by Carolee R. Inskeep and published by Genealogical Publishing Com. This book was released on 1996 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second book by Mrs. Inskeep that breaks new ground with respect to the estimated 200,000 poor and abandoned orphaned children who were shipped from New York City orphanages to western families for adoption between 1853 and 1929. These children were placed primarily by the New York Foundling Hospital (NYFH) and the Children's Aid Society (CAS) and are now referred to as "Orphan Train Riders." Information as to the identities of a large number of these children has been preserved in federal and state censuses taken between 1855 and 1925, as well as in the 1890 New York City Police Census, and represents a potential boon to the descendants of these foundlings. This book, the sequel to Mars. Inskeep's 1995 work on the orphans from the New York Foundling Hospital, treats the residents of the Children's Aid Society.

Download or read book The New York Juvenile Asylum written by Clark Kidder and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-21 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Juvenile Asylum (NYJA) was founded in 1851 by a group of prominent businessmen and professionals concerned about vagrancy among poor children in New York City. It was designed to house, educate, reform, and indenture children who were homeless, truant, or convicted of petty crimes in New York City. The NYJA being an alternative to the punitive House of Refuge where more hardened young criminals (incarcerated alongside much older adults) were being sent. Most children accepted into the NYJA were between the ages of seven and fifteen, but children both younger and older were accepted at times. The NYJA relocated to 176th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in 1856. By the end of 1919 over 42,000 children had been admitted to the Asylum. About 6,000 were sent West on orphan trains in what is now referred to as America's Orphan Train Movement. The names in this volume represent over five thousand children who lived in the New York Juvenile Asylum, as well as its House of Reception (where applicable), between 1855 and 1925. The names were extracted from the following enumerations conducted at the Asylum and House of Reception: the 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 federal censuses; and the New York State censuses of 1855, 1905, 1915, and 1925. The censuses are arranged chronologically and the children listed alphabetically for each census. The descriptions vary from census to census; however, in virtually all cases they provide the individual's name, race, sex, age, and state or country of birth. Also included for several of the censuses is the state or country of birth for the parents of each child. In a couple of the censuses the "residence when admitted" (to the Asylum) is listed for each child.

Download or read book An Orphan in New York City written by Seymour Siegel and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2000-08-14 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Orphan in New York City is about survival. During the Great Depression families who suffered loss of income, loss of health, and loss of life sought frantically for ways to survive. Social Security, Housing and Urban Development, Public Assistance, and Public Health programs available today were limited or non-existent back then. All extended family members helped out as much as they could. When this was not enough, the only choice was to break up the family. Benevolent Jews had established orphanages to care for children left homeless or in poverty. The largest of these orphanages was the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, better known as the HOA or The Home, located between 136th to 138th Streets on Amsterdam Avenue across from the Lewisohn Stadium of the City College of New York City. From 1929 to 1939 the HOA housed more than one thousand boys and girls at a time. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum was referred to as a city within a city as it was basically self-contained. Not only where there the essentials of residential life-- dormitories, a kitchen, a dining room, an infirmary, a dental clinic, and a laundry--but also a public school 192, a synagogue, and a religious school. Then too there were a bakery, a shoe shop, a tailor shop, a barber shop, a clothing store, a candy store, a woodworking room, a sewing room, a photography studio and darkroom, a boys scout room, a band room, a choir room, athletic fields and playgrounds. There was a Reception House, the Main Building, the Warner Brothers Gymnasium (state of the art at that time), and buildings for boilers for heating. It had its own transportation system and a fire engine. There were military bands and drill squads, fraternities and sororities, as well as baseball, basketball, and football teams that competed with other orphanages and the junior varsity at City College. Orphans, half orphans, and children from broken families began their shared institutional lives at the Reception House where they were isolated for two weeks to assure they did not bring any contagious disease or illness into the institution. The author was one of those with a family destroyed by alcoholism and poverty who had to leave his family at the age of nine and begin an orphan's life. He writes: "Having seen, from my top-floor perch in the Reception House, children who were playing on the huge field below, and having listened to the marching band and watched the military drills, I was looking forward to moving to the Main Building. But when I finally got there I felt lost in the labyrinth of hallways and doorways, and among the masses of children who were coming and going. Outside, in the courtyard, were more than 100 children talking, shouting and playing together. One of my first memories there is of hearing a short rotund man suddenly shout above that babble of voices: "All Steeeeeeeeeel!" All Still. What that meant only became clear when, as I watched, most of the children froze in their places and stopped talking. One child did not freeze. The man with the powerful voice strode over to him and slapped him so hard across the face that the child fell down.In the years that I would be in the orphanage, that and similar examples made me obey the "All Still!" and always appear to be following commands, rules, and regulations, even when I wasn't obeying. What I witnessed there, day after day, also reinforced my hopeless and helpless feeling that there were immense forces beyond my control: my father's rage, my separation, my placement in an institutional environment, and the subsequent abuse in that environment. I wept within myself, and there was no adult at the institution to comfort me, not the first day nor the last." For his own healing, Dr. Siegel has written a book about his decade during the depression years in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum

Download or read book Orphan Trains written by Stephen O'Connor and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-03 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the orphan trains that were operated by the Children's Aid Society between 1854 and 1929, taking abandoned children from New York to homes in the Midwest and West; and discusses the life and motivation of young minister Charles Loring Brace, founder of the society.

Download or read book The New York Foundling Hospital written by Carolee R. Inskeep and published by Genealogical Publishing Company. This book was released on 1995 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Foundling Hospital was formed on 11 October 1869 by Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, a member of the New York Sisters of Charity. It manages more than forty programs for infants, youths, young parents, and families, and emphasizes home care.

Download or read book The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction written by Linda Gordon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1904, New York nuns brought forty Irish orphans to a remote Arizona mining camp, to be placed with Catholic families. The Catholic families were Mexican, as was the majority of the population. Soon the town's Anglos, furious at this "interracial" transgression, formed a vigilante squad that kidnapped the children and nearly lynched the nuns and the local priest. The Catholic Church sued to get its wards back, but all the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled in favor of the vigilantes. The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction tells this disturbing and dramatic tale to illuminate the creation of racial boundaries along the Mexican border. Clifton/Morenci, Arizona, was a "wild West" boomtown, where the mines and smelters pulled in thousands of Mexican immigrant workers. Racial walls hardened as the mines became big business and whiteness became a marker of superiority. These already volatile race and class relations produced passions that erupted in the "orphan incident." To the Anglos of Clifton/Morenci, placing a white child with a Mexican family was tantamount to child abuse, and they saw their kidnapping as a rescue. Women initiated both sides of this confrontation. Mexican women agreed to take in these orphans, both serving their church and asserting a maternal prerogative; Anglo women believed they had to "save" the orphans, and they organized a vigilante squad to do it. In retelling this nearly forgotten piece of American history, Linda Gordon brilliantly recreates and dissects the tangled intersection of family and racial values, in a gripping story that resonates with today's conflicts over the "best interests of the child."

Download or read book Invisible Child written by Andrea Elliott and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A “vivid and devastating” (The New York Times) portrait of an indomitable girl—from acclaimed journalist Andrea Elliott “From its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering for reimmersion in its Dickensian depths.”—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Atlantic, The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Library Journal In Invisible Child, Pulitzer Prize winner Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care. Out on the street, Dasani becomes a fierce fighter “to protect those who I love.” When she finally escapes city life to enroll in a boarding school, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning your family, and yourself? A work of luminous and riveting prose, Elliott’s Invisible Child reads like a page-turning novel. It is an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality—told through the crucible of one remarkable girl. Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize • Finalist for the Bernstein Award and the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award

Download or read book Orphan Trains written by Marylin Irvin Holt and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1994-02-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."—Library Journal

Download or read book The Luckiest Orphans written by Hyman Bogen and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded in 1860, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of New York was the oldest, largest, and best-known Jewish orphanage in the United States until its closing in 1941. This book, the first history of an orphanage ever published, tells the story of the HOA's development from a nineteenth-century institution into a model twentieth-century child-care facility. Because of the humane and benevolent attitude of the New York Jewish community toward its orphans, the harsh authoritarianism and Dickensian conditions typical of contemporary orphanages were gradually replaced there by a nurturing approach that looked after the religious, social, and personal needs of the children. Though primarily an instrument of social control, the HOA was also an expression of Jewish ethnicity. Its history is set in a larger context that includes the life and character of the New York Jewish community, the city's immigrant population, the social and economic conditions of the time, the child-saving efforts of other groups, and the debate over institutional versus foster care. Drawing from HOA archives, published sources, and his personal experience as a resident from 1932 to 1941, Hyman Bogen brings a unique perspective to child-saving efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His compelling tale portrays daily life for those who lived and worked in such institutions. He illustrates how an enlightened orphanage, rather than crushing the spirit of its young residents, can help children to gain self-esteem and become secure adults. Bogen's tale will be of particular interest to urban and social historians, to city and government officials, and to social workers, as well as to anyone concerned with thegrowing crisis in child-care options.

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of New York City written by Kenneth T. Jackson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 4282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering an exhaustive range of information about the five boroughs, the first edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City was a success by every measure, earning worldwide acclaim and several awards for reference excellence, and selling out its first printing before it was officially published. But much has changed since the volume first appeared in 1995: the World Trade Center no longer dominates the skyline, a billionaire businessman has become an unlikely three-term mayor, and urban regeneration—Chelsea Piers, the High Line, DUMBO, Williamsburg, the South Bronx, the Lower East Side—has become commonplace. To reflect such innovation and change, this definitive, one-volume resource on the city has been completely revised and expanded. The revised edition includes 800 new entries that help complete the story of New York: from Air Train to E-ZPass, from September 11 to public order. The new material includes broader coverage of subject areas previously underserved as well as new maps and illustrations. Virtually all existing entries—spanning architecture, politics, business, sports, the arts, and more—have been updated to reflect the impact of the past two decades. The more than 5,000 alphabetical entries and 700 illustrations of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City convey the richness and diversity of its subject in great breadth and detail, and will continue to serve as an indispensable tool for everyone who has even a passing interest in the American metropolis.

Download or read book The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band of New York City 1874 1941 written by Carol Shansky and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-11 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band of New York City, 1874–1941 is at the same time the story of a boys’ band and a story of New York City. The band was not only an important educational component of one of the largest Jewish charitable organizations of its time, but also a significant source of music-making and performance in New York. What made the band especially noteworthy was the reputation it developed performing outside of New York’s many concert halls and major musical institutions. The band was ever-present, participating in events ranging from conventional parades to building ground-breakings to celebrations of major figures in New York history. The band was always ready to perform and to be part of New York cultural life. In doing so, they typified the Jewish-American experience of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and illustrated the substantial effort of those that engage in community music-making and the critical role school music played in the lives of its participants and local community. These are the unknown musicians without whom New York’s musical life would have certainly been diminished. As this history explores their numerous performances, successes, and activities, historical events in New York, some lesser known than others, some humorous, some dark, are described in rich detail as well. The legacy of the band – the careers the boys had as they matured and the contributions they and their band directors made during their lives – is also explored in this fascinating history.

Download or read book Orphan Train Girl written by Christina Baker Kline and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This young readers’ edition of Christina Baker Kline’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train follows a twelve-year-old foster girl who forms an unlikely bond with a ninety-one-year-old woman. Adapted and condensed for a young audience, Orphan Train Girl includes an author’s note and archival photos from the orphan train era. This book is especially perfect for mother/daughter reading groups. Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it’s her attitude that’s the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she’s had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly’s forced to help an a wealthy elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. But from the moment they meet, Molly realizes that Vivian isn’t like any of the adults she’s encountered before. Vivian asks Molly questions about her life and actually listens to the answers. Soon Molly sees they have more in common than she thought. Vivian was once an orphan, too—an Irish immigrant to New York City who was put on a so-called "orphan train" to the Midwest with hundreds of other children—and she can understand, better than anyone else, the emotional binds that have been making Molly’s life so hard. Together, they not only clear boxes of past mementos from Vivian’s attic, but forge a path of friendship, forgiveness, and new beginnings.

Download or read book Orphan Train Rider written by Andrea Warren and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1996 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the placement of over 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children in homes throughout the Midwest from 1854 to 1929 by recounting the story of one boy and his brothers.

Download or read book The Orphan Master s Son written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.

Download or read book Orphan Train written by Christina Baker Kline and published by HarperLuxe. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Christina Baker Kline comes a novel about two women: one about to age out of the foster care system, the other 90 years old and carrying both a tremendous secret and a story of a life formed by a part of American history almost entirely forgotten: the Orphan Trains Molly Ayer has one last chance, and she knows it. Close to being kicked out of her foster home -- just months from turning 18 and “aging out” of the system -- Molly should be grateful that her boyfriend found her a community service project: helping an old lady clean out her home. Molly can’t help but think that the 50 hours will be tedious, but at least they’ll keep her out of juvie, and right now that’s all she cares about. Ninety-one-year-old Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine for decades. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are keys to a turbulent past. Molly is about to discover -- as she and Vivian unpack her possessions, and memories -- that Vivian’s story is a piece of America’s tumultuous history now largely forgotten: the tale of a young Irish immigrant, orphaned in New York City and put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other orphaned children whose destiny would be determined by luck and chance. As Molly digs deeper, she finds surprising parallels in her own experience as a Penobscot Indian and Vivian’s story -- and Molly realizes that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life. Rich in detail and epic in scope, THE TRAIN RIDER is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendships, and of the secrets we carry with us that keep us from finding out who we are.